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Americanisation

You know, I see quite a few of these YouTube videos where Americans compare stuff to what happens in Australia. It is not these that peak my interest, but rather that the global Americanisation is so ubiquitous. Everything about modern life is largely the same in the western world. Have a think about the computer age and where that originated. The internet and social media are American inventions. Smart phones are a big part of this and they too are a US innovation. Beyond this, to more prosaic trends and think about working out, bigger muscles and tattoos. These too, are American cultural shifts, which occurred over the last couple of decades.Continue Reading

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Truth Social & Donald Trump

Authoritarians and their regimes like to spell shit out for their subjects. Some of you older folk may remember that the USSR had a news organisation/newspaper called Pravda. This was the official platform of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Pravda meant truth and many of us in the west used to roll our eyes at what passed for truth and facts over there. Now, we have Truth Social and Donald Trump in America. The parallels are pretty frightening in this post-truth world. The thing is that people are getting dumber and that naming something like this is enough for the unquestioning among us. Irony is a rare commodity in the United States in the 21C, perhaps more so than these rare earths the Donald goes on about so often.Continue Reading